Monday, October 5, 2009

POSITION PAPER NO.3

Name : Nor Aslinawati Binti Nawawi
Matric No. : 0726078
Title : Position Paper No. 3

“Violence in the school is a result of differences outside school. We as counselors can’t do anything about it”. Discuss.


Violence is not something new among the students. School violence is widely held to have become a serious problem in recent decades in many countries, especially where weapons such as guns or knives are involved. Each day, there will be many cases occur either inside or outside of the school. Before I proceed with this topic, let me define what violence means is. According to Dr. Mona O’Moore in her bullying research said that there is a tendency, at present, towards viewing aggression, bullying and violence as being synonymous. While few will disagree that bullying and violence are sub-sets of aggressive behavior, disagreements are encountered, especially in respect of what constitutes bullying and violence. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines violence as unlawful exercise of physical force. Olweus (1999) also confines violence to the use of physical force. He defines violence or violent behavior as aggressive behavior where the actor or perpetrator uses his or her own body as an object (including a weapon) to inflict (relatively serious) injury or discomfort upon an individual.

People are always complaining about school violence, but don't bother to find out what causes school violence. The causes of school violence are bullies, teasing, and hazing or maybe because of differential between them. It is true that there is much violence in the school because of differences outside school. As we know, in this world we are not living with our own race or religion or ethnic but we are sharing this world with the others people. In one school, there will be black person or maybe the white person. It is the tradition where the white people always making trouble to the black people and it can’t be denied that there are black people who are in anti-white people. Because of that tradition, it gives bad effect to the students. In school, they start to avoid and be stereotypes to the other races and ethnics. They begin to have fight by creating new problems which sometimes are not relevant and not event can be accepted by mind. Here, the function of the counselor is important in order to make the students’ development are in the right ways. This violence cannot be stop but as a counselor we can do something in order to reduce it.

First of all, get all the information about the school itself. Here, counselor must do some investigation in order to know what actually happen in that school. Everything happen in that school must be related or influences by the differences outside school. So, try to get as much as possible the information about the real picture of the outside school. Do some observation or maybe some interview to make it more reliable. After that, build one committee which involves the principle, teachers, students, staff, parents and community itself in order to get fully trust and participation from others. In order to make it fully accomplish, as a counselor, we must start doing the prevention program for violence at individual stage first. These programs are aimed at students who exhibit aggression and violent behaviors or are at risk for engaging in such behaviors. Some programs include conflict resolution and team problem-solving. Other programs teach students social skills where they can have communication skill. Then, moved to the family level where here the purpose is to improve family relationship. As we know, family background gives many effects on the behavior of children in the short and long term. Children will do what ever their parent does. Try to make the family realize that they are not live alone in this world. Sometimes, they will need somebody else to complete their life. If the parents play their own roles and show the good role model to the children, it will give positive effect to them in school. Next, focus to the school-wide strategies which are designed to modify the school characteristics that are associated with violence. Try to promote classroom management techniques, cooperative learning, and close student supervision. Begin the program since they were in primary school where we teach them good behavior in order to helps reduce classroom disruption and promotes pro-social classroom interactions. As a counselor, we can help the students to improve their level of empathy so that they will have more responsibility toward the others. Other school-wide strategies are aimed at reducing or eliminating bullying and organizing the local police to better combat gang violence. Lastly, conduct prevention level at the society-level which aim to change social and cultural conditions in order to reduce violence regardless of where the violence occurs. Examples include reducing media violence, reshaping social norms, and restructuring educational systems.

But, it is not easy to implement all of the programs because as we know, it is hard for the counselor to get fully cooperation from all the parties especially from parents’ side. Some of people may claim those counselors are only for the people who have mental problems. When we talk about counseling, people will think it just wasting time without knowing that counselor can help them in getting a good future.

As a conclusion, it is not true that as a counselor we cannot do anything about violence but with our potential we are able to reduce the violence among the students and make sure that our students will have good accommodation in having teaching and learning process in school.

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